By Seared Lightly

A new cookbook offers a wide range of innovative dishes to highlight this outdoor grilling season.  Canadian author Ted Reader is a televised celebrity chef with a penchant for placing planks on an open grill to add flavor to an awesome array of foods.  The Art of Plank Grilling has hit your neighborhood book stores packaged with a wood plank.  

This tome pushes the limits of what can be cooked on the barbecue, including Chocolate Chip cookies and planked Sushi pizza.  Added to the mix are plenty of tips, cooking guides and descriptions of all the equipment needed for an outdoor feast.  While cedar is the preferred wood for grilling salmon, Reader describes the delicate flavors that can be imparted with other common western woods.

The Canadian cable TV network show CTV Travel broadcasts Reader’s show King of the Q Grilling Adventures weely.  The Ontario native has also penned Hot, Sticky and on Fire, a best seller in Canada.  Amazon is selling his books on line.

Pan Drippings–Ernest Hemingway wrote a memorable tribute to oys ters on the half shell in A Moveable Feast..."As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and make plans"... the Portland Farmers’ Market on the Park Blocks has been cited by two national publications as one of America’s top 10 Farmers’ Markets.  

There are now over 4,300 such dispensaries in these United States, increasing by 18% in the past two years...the 15th annual Gravenstein Apple Days celebration lures visitors to the Hood River Valley Saturday and Sunday, August 18-19, with fruit stqands and picnic sites amidst the orchards...Umpqua Dairy Products has earned a Distinguished Award for Quality Excellence at a national dairy industry show in Denver.  Products, particularly ice cream, are distributed in supermarkets throughout Oregon... 
 

© 2007 Oregon Magazine